Produced for CARE and DANIDA who gave me absolute
creative freedom. CARE is the world's largest private aid organization
and DANIDA is the Danish International Development Agency.

Even though I speak no Spanish and did not want to let
it influence my racism work, I accepted CARE's invitation after I found
out that the project was a continuation of my work in the USA: poverty,
underdevelopment and a social group in a psychologically closed system.
Here it was also a matter of exploring a, for whites, surprisingly
unknown territory.

And, more importantly: the project will continue for
several years which will make it possible for me not just superficially
and passively to use my camera in cynical exploitation of the pain and
suffering, but to make it a necessary tool in active participation in
the long-term work of changing the conditions.

This preliminary version of the show is the result of a
3-week introductory trip where I had no possibility of establishing
deeper relationships with people. As the Danish part of CARE's project
had not yet been started, this draft primarily deals with my own
meeting with this incredible country.

For Bolivia is indeed the most grandiose and beautiful
country I have ever seen.

Bolivia is the most Indian country in South America.

60% of the population are Aymara or Quechua Indians,
and 35% are mestizos.

For 300 years the Aymaras were the aboriginal
population of Bolivia and had a highly developed civilization.

In the 1400s they were incorporated in the Inca Empire,
which let them keep their own culture.

Today's Quechuas are descendants of the Incas.

Bolivia is about the size of England, France and
Germany put together.

It is divided into 3 completely different areas:

The Altiplano, which is a plateau at 13.000 feet, where
the majority of the population lives, the extensive mountain valleys
and the Amazon lowlands.

MUSIC (3:40 min)

Following in the footsteps of the Incas is not easy.

As soon as you step out on the 4-mile-long runway,
which is the world's longest because of the thin air at 13.000 feet,
you have problems breathing, your head hurts and your heart is
pounding.

The history of Bolivia seems melodramatic, because it
appears unlikely that any one country should be exposed to such an
endless number of problems.

The Aymara Indians, the original population, were
incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 1400s.

Just as incomprehensible as the highly developed
civilization of the Incas is the European genocide ?of? 12 mio. Incas,
who in 30 years were reduced to 200.000 - yes, incomprehensible as the
fact that this is hardly mentioned in Danish textbooks.

Not until today - 500 years later - is the population
figure of the former Inca Empire again as high.

Even to this day, the peasants celebrate the popular
heroes who were executed by the Spaniards during the age long
resistance, and see the white part of Bolivia's population as
"strangers".

A lot in the culture are relics of the Incas: their
adobe houses, costumes, pagan rituals, mythology and not least the
panpipe music.

Never have I been to a country where so many people
play music.

In every peasant home I saw their characteristic string
and wind instruments - especially the somber zampona flutes which gives
the Altiplano music its heavy coloring.

Music from La Pena:

This is Bolivia's flag which is proudly presented on
any

solemn occasion.

The red is the blood of the heroes who fought against
the Spaniards, the yellow the minerals of the Altiplano which lead to
the death of millions, and the green the forests in the lowlands and
the hope for a future in this area which has not yet been colonized.
These colors were seen time and again in the lupine fields of the
Altiplano.

The more fascinated I became with this incredible
people, the more I fell in love with their flag.

But these are Bolivia's true colors, the striped cloth
in which the peasants carry everything.

For the visitor, the country's serious problems may
easily drown in an ocean of dazzling colors, catchy music and
overwhelmingly beautiful scenery.

Music:

I thought I knew quite a bit about Bolivia, but soon
found out that I simply had some very stereotypical ideas of scowling
Altiplano Indians with their dark bowlers, which they were forced to
wear by the Spaniards, and the women's two long braids tied together by
woolen threads and the 18-20 layers of skirts which make them look
overweight.

That this typical Aymara dress has come to represent
Bolivia in the rest of the world, is due to the fact that very few
foreigners travel on the impassable roads outside of La Paz.

In fact, every single region has its own characteristic
costume. The peasants are able to tell just by looking at the men's
caps and ponchos or the women's hats, skirts and shawls from which
region they come. And - possibly because of my own somewhat strange
look - I rarely had any problems bringing out smiles.....

Music:

Another thing we know from Bolivia is Lake Titicaca
with the elegant rush boats.

This lake, which is the highest in the world, is
extremely beautiful, but I never did see any of the rush boats.

This was where the original Aymara cultures flourished
before the Incas, and this was where the Incas maintained that their
civilization was born - even though Inca philosophers later doubted the
allegation that these children of the sun, just like the sun itself,
were born in Lake Titicaca.

The Indians still revere the lake and, to my surprise,
still worship the sun - here swimming at 13.000 feet, where the sun
will burn you in no time.

Soon I understood the significance of the bowler hat.
But a few minutes after sunset I almost got lost here in a raging
blizzard.

This is just one example of how Bolivia is the country
of surprising contrasts.

I also had to do away with another preconceived idea.
All my life I have seen Bolivia as the hotbed of superficial
revolutions. It has the world record in changing presidents, which they
have done almost once a year, and almost as many military coups -
always white men over the heads of the population.

So, all of a sudden, having to see Bolivia as a
democracy is a psychological leap a little like the fall of the Berlin
Wall.

But election propaganda on every wall in the country
bear witness that, after 3 elections, popular participation is on the
rise - even though the strange alliances between leftwing generals and
rightwing communists must alienate the Indian peasant population.

Here we are at an electoral meeting with the
conservative party headed by a former military dictator.

Fireworks:

Nonetheless, I experienced widespread political
participation among the Indians - not least among the women.

It was a hunger strike by mineworkers' wives that lead
to the fall of the last military dictatorship.

But the military still seems to lurk in the background.

March music and

soldier pictures.

It was a pleasure to see the enthusiasm with which the
Bolivians are now using their newly-won democracy.

Almost daily there were demonstrations - often against
US intervention.

When I photographed this demonstration I was the only
Yankee present. All of a sudden the crown turned against me with
threatening fists and rhythmical shouts "Gringo, Gringo".

For a minute there, I feared that they would also
string me up in the tree.

Luckily, they had the same wonderfully gentle nature
that I had met in the population everywhere. Nowhere in the country did
I ever feel threatened.

The political violence and petty crime haunting other
Latin American countries, have not yet reached Bolivia, maybe because
it is too underdeveloped, but this makes the country a paradise for
tourists. Even when I was arrested by secret police for having taken
these demonstration pictures, the interrogation took place in a
friendly atmosphere.

The paramilitary police had not quite gotten used to
the democratic rules and hoped to persuade me to give them copies so
they could identify the demonstrators.

It is surprising that there is democracy in Bolivia.

It is the poorest country in South America and it is
getting poorer every day.

For years the income has fallen by 5% a year, even
though the country could have been rich with its enormous mineral
deposits.

It was the huge silver mountains in this town, Potosi,
which brought the Spaniards to the country 500 years ago. This is the
highest town in the world and used to be the biggest in the world -
bigger than London and Paris.

I naturally wanted to see the place from where Europe's
enormous wealth originates, and despite many warnings I went down into
the mines.

But that day will be chiseled in my memory forever.

First the slow climb up the hill in the mineworkers'
truck, which was constantly on the verge of overturning.

My fear grew during hours of waiting while the
mineworkers stuffed their mouths with coca leaves to chew up their
courage.

They work night and day to make enough money for their
families, so spending 2 hours chewing up their courage says something
about the risk involved.

For while the mining industry did formerly account for
3/4 of Bolivia's income, the world price on tin hit a rock bottom in
1986, and the mines went bankrupt. The mineworkers, who couldn't get
other work, have tried to continue on their own - and this hasn't made
their work any less dangerous.

Where the mine companies invested in safety equipment?,
shoring and pneumatic drills, it is now up to the individual mineworker
who works on his own using 400-year-old methods.

There is not the time nor the money for shores, so
every worker randomly drills galleries so narrow that he can hardly
squeeze himself through. Every man owns the tin vein that he finds.

It was with deep awe that I entered the galleries where
8 million Indians and African slaves died.

The Spaniards forced them to work 4 months at the time
without letting them out.

7 out of 10 never came out again. The shores they put
up 400 years ago still remain in the upper, cooler layers of the mine,
where I could almost stand up.

Later I had to crawl on all four.

It is impossible to describe this awful experience.
Even outside the mine I could hardly walk the last 50 yards up to the
shaft because of lack of oxygen here at 15.000 feet.

But having to crawl hundreds of yards in pitch-darkness
with less and less oxygen, through icy water and strong winds up above
and 110 degrees Fahrenheit of stifling heat further below, was like
descending into Dante's inferno.

Already on the second story I almost gave up.

The dangerous chemicals, the siliciferous dust, which
gives the miners a painful death, arsenic gasses, acetylene fumes and
other confined by-products of explosions and combustion quickly destroy
your idea of showing solidarity with the mineworkers with your own body
and soul.

I dropped the carbide lamp when I was burnt by the
flame. And I could not see anything anyhow since chemicals made my eyes
smart like hydrochloric acid.

These pictures are taken blindly just by aiming at the
sound.

At the bottom my courage deserted me completely when
the mineworkers told me that if I passed out, I would never get out as
they could only carry 40 pounds.

When I tried to photograph this worker, I knocked a
rock down over him which almost killed him.

Many of the mineworkers were disappointed that I hadn't
brought them enough dynamite, which is sold all over town.

I didn't manage to get out before the explosions, and
it was indeed a shaking experience to sit buried in a pocket deep
underground and feel everything around me explode not knowing if a
drilling had come too close.

While the dust settled, we had what is called a
lunch-break in Europe - but here it was just coca leaves to soothe the
hunger and the pain.

Acidiferous tears gushed out of me when they told me
how they had all lost a father, an uncle or brothers down there, and
knew that it was just a question of time before they would die
themselves.

MUSIC:

Savia Anino: "El Minero"

Gloomy days in subterranean

galleries,

nights of tragedy.

Faded hopes and disillusion

are felt in my soul.

Such is my life now

because I am a miner.

As a miner who gives my whole

existence to my country

I will suffer more in my life.

My great tragedy will end

a long ways from here,

I was predestined to live

in heaven.

Therefore I beg God to let me die a good mineworker.

Above ground they believe

in a God in the heavens,

but down here the Devil reigns.

He owns the minerals, which they take from him. That is
why he takes their lives.

To mitigate his anger

they call him uncle, and give

him lit cigarettes,

coca leaves and alcohol

in his mouth.

After the revolution in 1952 which was prompted by
militant mineworkers, the government built houses for the workers with
the money which the tin profiteers had previously invested in Europe.

Now they are becoming dilapidated and only mountains of
slag remind the children of the huge amounts of silver and tin which
was taken to Europe without them or Bolivia getting anything out of it.

The few children, who are so lucky as to have
grandparents, have to watch them demonstrate to claim their right to a
pension.

A fruitless begging, for the government has no money.
After the large debt crises in the 80s, it is no longer minerals but
money that flows in a steady stream to the rich world.

After the collapse of the mining industry an increasing
number of people are depending on what they can grow on their land.

And many of the mineworkers have gone down to the coca
fields.

For coca seems to be the only third world product that
we, in the rich countries, are willing to pay a reasonable price for.

It is difficult to imagine from these beautifully laid
out? coca fields in the jungle the great suffering caused by cocaine in
the USA. The black ghettoes are on the verge of total disintegration as
a result of crack and drug-related crime.

Even though there are no other jobs for ghetto youths
than selling cocaine, the US government has launched a regular war
against the victims instead of social reforms.

The same war has been launched by the US against coca
producers in Latin America.

With promises to help the country, they have forced
Bolivia, against the wish of the population, to use the military
against these poor coca peasants.

It is not very hard to imagine the feelings aroused in
a population which has formerly seen the military gunning down hundreds
of mineworkers headed by women and children in order to supply the rich
countries with cheap minerals.

Not one of the Bolivians I met feel that the US has any
right to put an end to the only success they've ever had with the free
market-forces which the USA has always tried to teach them.

If the North Americans are so unhappy that they want to
destroy themselves with the coca which Bolivians have grown for
centuries as a sacred plant and chew on any social occasion, it's their
own problem.

Although I've lost several friends in the USA as a
result of cocaine, I tend to agree with the Bolivians.

You cannot take everything from a country and then
blame it for wanting to survive.

And as long as we Europeans protect our own farmers and
thereby make it impossible for Bolivia's peasants to sell their far
cheaper products, we also have to put up with being flooded by cocaine.

The cocaine can just about yield the profit that their
food production cannot give.

With the support of the entire population and with
their eyes and ears directed towards the US special troops, it was
extremely difficult to take these pictures.

Everywhere in the stiflingly humid coca fields, the
peasants would run away when I came climbing down the mountain slopes.

With my gringo look, they thought I was an agent or a
press photographer who would make the soldiers aware of their
existence.

But supplied with papers from CARE, who enjoys
tremendous respect all over the country, and through my friendship with
this educated picker who could read to the others and show them my
passport, I succeeded in gaining the confidence of these wonderful
pickers.

Even 4-year-old children had been trained to run away
from the field at the slightest suspicion of visitors.

And I suppose that it is a tragedy that 50.000
hardworking peasants on this end as well as hundreds of thousands young
people in the US ghettoes are criminalized in their desperate attempt
to survive in a world that has brutally marginalized them.

Music

Without access to the see, Bolivia has never had any
industry.

Therefore farming is now the only chance of survival.

But the majority of the peasants have been relegated to
subsistence farming.

Many places the soil is so poor that nothing can grow.

In the mining area of Potosi people can no longer make
a living from digging for stones and now have to live from stones???.
Survival is conditional on the sparse grass between the stones for
lamas and sheep. The stone houses can barely be made out between the
rocks and I never figured out how they keep warm in the almost arctic
night frosts in this area.

No other region fascinated me as much with its total
denial of human existence.

And yet, the scattered shepherds were living proof that
the impossible can be done.

I fell in love with the children all over Bolivia, but
these shabby, colorful herds children touched me deeply.

This 5-year-old girl told me that every day, from
sunrise to sundown, she herds a large flock of sheep all by herself.

Everywhere in Potosi these children of the rocks ran to
the road when, maybe twice a day, a car went by.

From early childhood they had learned that a quarter or
a piece of bread meant the difference between a meal or going to bed
hungry. This band comes from here and directly call themselves "Norte
de Potosi".

The woman with eyes like the imploring, hopeful
children's eyes I saw, sings of living without money in a child's voice
almost like the children's squeaky, almost shrillingly desperate voices
which went right through me.

Music (Norte de Potosi):

Further north, on the Altiplano where the shallow lakes
are teeming with flamingoes, it is not quite so barren.

Here, on the treeless, barren plateau is where the
majority of Bolivia's Indian peasants are found in small, closed
peasants' communities. The communities are 100% Indian, and it seems
incredible that almost everyone marries within the village, since every
village has only a few hundred inhabitants.

For thousands of years all land was common property,
and since almost everybody in the village is related to each other, it
is still very common that the families are assigned land according to
their needs.

I had heard a lot about how impenetrable and hostile
these small, collective villages are to strangers as a result of
centuries of white oppression, but several times, on festive occasions,
I succeeded in getting invited to their common meals. With their strong
resistance against being exploited photographically, they are the most
difficult people in the world to photograph.

Even at great distances they ducked behind the sheep at
the mere sight of a camera.

Not without humor, though. It took me 2 hours to
photograph this girl, as she kept hiding behind the wall to tease me.

The women's colorful, bulging skirts literally made me
feel like a skirt-teaser with my camera.

But the women also radiate a peculiar strength.

The Aymara women often beat their husbands, the men
told me, while the men almost never hit them back.

The men's attitude to the women maybe has to do with
the fact that children on the Altiplano are nursed till they are 3 or
4, which creates extremely strong bonds between mother and child.

With their reluctant nature, a lot like their cold,
windy tundra surroundings, it was so much greater an experience to get
a glimpse of their deeper human kindness.

For no kindness should be able to survive in these
surroundings, where everybody has to toil in order to make an existence
for themselves out of the more or less exhausted land.

In many poor countries, people work in bare feet, but
in this freezing rain the expression of suffering and impoverishment on
their faces seemed to increase the higher I got.

One in every three children die before they reach the
age of five, and young people look very old.

In this village, CARE has financed the water supply,
which has improved the hygiene so much that the infant mortality rate
has decreased by 50%.

This CARE-manager told me how the Indians themselves
dug down the water pipes from the well up in the mountains. The project
cost CARE less than 1.000 dollars but it has already saved many lives.

If there were more money, CARE could make similar
projects in many other villages.

Bolivians are so used to see their children die that
they resign themselves to their fate, because they live with death so
close.

Especially diarrhea is the cause of death for many
children, and now people are being warned against cholera everywhere.

All over the world I have found that emaciated dogs are
a sign that also the people are starving.

In Bolivia the host of hungry dogs bear witness to the
conditions of human beings.

In other Third world countries I saw hospitals full of
undernourished children.

In Bolivia the hospitals look like empty factory
buildings with broken windows.

There is no money for them any longer with the cuts
that the international banks demand.

Children wander the direct way to the grave without
consulting the hospital.

Funerals are solemn but not sad.

For Bolivians death is no stranger.

Old people are a rarity.

Life expectancy is less than 50 years, so it is not
difficult for them to imagine their fate.

Like Seneca they constantly face death. Their
consciousness of their being mortal resembles that of the middle ages:
Death is a chance occurrence, an inscrutable part of a universe forever
beyond their comprehension.

It is only necessary to learn to accept it. And they
have. The renaissance concept of a world full of joy is one that they
do not understand. Life must be endured, and death therefore arouses no
fear. Death brings peace.

The Aymaras only adopted those aspects of Christianity
that they found attractive.

In that way a popular Catholicism of an exceptional
richness has arisen.

While, outwardly, they worship the Christian gods, they
continue to worship the gods of their forefathers. The world, as the
Aymaras see it, is not a happy place.

It is full of demons who steal children, ruin their
crops, kill their animals and drive people crazy.

A god of peace and love stands no chance against such
adversaries.

You are better off putting your faith in the magic that
served your forefathers so well.

The urban population, on the other hand, seems more
influenced by the Roman-Catholic church.

Parade with music:

On the Altiplano, the Indian peasants get less and less
land as the population grows.

Many of them only have a few exhausted rows of potatoes
left and are forced into the cities.

But the country is 25 times the size of Denmark and has
land enough for its 7 million inhabitants. Often I drove for long
stretches without seeing any people.

Some places, there is only a few hours' drive from the
windy tundra on the Altiplano to the tropical rainforest in the
lowlands which covers about 70% of the country and is almost devoid of
people.

The distress on the Altiplano keeps forcing more people
down here, but often the land can only sustain them very briefly.

It looks fertile enough, so why not cut down the forest
and cultivate the land.

On a mountain slope I met Manuel who was clearing the
forest.

It was so steep that I kept sliding backwards and had
to use lianas and twining plants to pull myself up.

Only dire need would make anyone try to cultivate this
land, so I knew that he was desperate.

He told me that he would grow flowers for the rich city
people. First he would cut down the forest and then burn it during the
dry season.

When I said to him that without the roots of the trees
to detain the water, it would be washed down, he answered that he
realized that he could only cultivate this land for five years before
all the soil and nutrients were washed away.

But he had no choice if he wanted to survive.

Later on, he would move deeper into the rainforest.

Everywhere on the lower mountainsides I saw how
Bolivia's luxuriant rainforest is cut down and burnt in that kind of
slash-and-burn farming.

On the most hopelessly steep places corn fields are now
growing in the middle of the rapidly disappearing forests.

Corn fields which are only fields for a few years
before everything is washed away and no forest will ever grow there
again.

The smoke from the slash-and-burn farms reveals where
the crime is about to happen, a crime not just against the future of
Bolivia but against the future of all of mankind because of the
greenhouse effect. If the development continues at this rate, there
will be no more rainforests in the world in a few years, and these vast
areas will slowly transform into deserts.

The catastrophical effects of this in terms of climate
and people is depressing enough, but when you travel in the fertile
eco-systems of the rainforests with more species of plants and animals
than in the rest of the world, its rapid disappearance hits you with a
particular sadness.

Rainforest sounds with music:

In the giant mountain-valleys stretching miles from the
Altiplano down to the jungle, one fifth of Bolivia's peasants has got
land in a very steep and rocky terrain.

But as it rains very little, the peasant becomes
totally dependent on the whims of the weather.

It may rain three years and the not the next two, and
when the drought comes there is no help to get. His social security is
therefore to own a flock of animals that he can fall back on.

It seems like a good idea and sheep and goats are
indeed jumping around merrily adding color to the landscape.

Yes, color, because the colors of the landscape may
quickly change to Bolivia's national colors: from green over yellow to
red.

When the rain fails to come, the goats over-graze the
slopes. And when the grass disappears, they eat the trees.

Without the roots of the grass or the trees, the soil
dries up and the erosion of the red soil begins. At the same time, the
peasants have been using the wood for cooking.

Without the trees to detain the water like a giant
sponge preventing the soil from drying up completely, its ability to
absorb the rainwater disappears. The rain runs down the surface instead
of sinking down, and it washes away mould and sand when it finally
comes.

This peasant, Gregorio, told me about his personal
tragedy. He has lived in Sillani all his life, but 30 years ago
everything began to change.

There used to be a lot of trees, but he cut them down
to get firewood and more farmland. But today the land is not at all
productive any more. The yield is low and the crops get diseases.

- I cannot provide enough food for a family of 10
children. The 5 eldest have gone to the city to survive and the
five youngest are leaving soon. It is the same everywhere around
here. Sillani will deteriorate and our land disappear.

Gregorio is sitting telling us about his tragedy in the
pitiful lunar landscape that he has created. His tragedy is not just
the tragedy of his family, but is rapidly becoming the tragedy of the
third world - or rather of the whole world.

Day by day, hour by hour huge areas of the fertile soil
in the third world is being washed into the rivers and the sea
irrevocably changing large parts of our productive planet - the only
one that we will ever be given - into barren deserts and lunar
landscapes.

Dramatic music and

erosion pictures.

From a distance we can lament the destruction of the
rainforest and the transformation of large parts of our planet into
lunar landscapes. We can easily work up the entire emotional register
in tearful campaigns to save and buy the rainforest from the human
criminals who are trying to destroy it. But what is the alternative for
the people who, like Manuel and Gregorio, are forced to participate in
these crimes out of need and the wish to survive.

Louis Rico: "Coplas de la Sequia"

Up there in the

With its skyscrapers and snow-covered mountains the
capital!! La Paz is a beautiful sight for the tourist, but for the
peasant who is forced to settle in the slum areas on the mountain
sides, the view is easily blurred by the constant struggle for daily
survival.

75% of Bolivia's population are unemployed or
underemployed. The children often have to collect garbage to survive.

Because of the cold, the slum areas look better than
many other places in the third world, but water and sanitation are also
lacking here.

Many people in the slums only survive because they
still own a little piece of land in the country - maybe 2 rows of
potatoes that can keep them alive.

It is extremely traumatic to change identity from
peasant to town culture, and most of them cling fanatically to their
roots in the village communities and refuse to give up their Indian
culture on the terms of the Spanish-speaking culture.

As the business community of Bolivia, the Indian women
are responsible for most of the country's trade. And, yet, it is not
their business sense, however impressive it is, as much as their
attitude that makes one lose one's courage-heart as a white person.

They look upon the world with a detached
undisturbedness-calm and not only seem indifferent to one's presence,
but even seem to repress it. The most difficult in involving them in
trade is to get their attention.

The trade history of mankind shows few examples of such
a carefree attitude - with the possible exception of the well-known
sluggishness of the Soviet citizens... which could lead to the
conclusion that the Bolivian population feels locked in a similar
closed, psychological system.

With such a stoic meekness towards one's own poverty in
the middle of the city's luxury, there are only very few beggars and
almost no crime.

But poverty has many faces and one of them is seen in
the city's amusement park, where the most popular attraction for the
children is to try a tricycle or to see old-fashioned moving pictures
in a box?

Music

As almost all the rich whites have Indian maids, the
pride of the peasant culture is easily transformed into racial
degradation in the city.

Bolivians love singing and dancing, but when the
light-skinned children of the upper-class, who are the few with
education and a secure future, are dancing carelessly down the streets,
their catching joy reminds the sitting Indian saleswomen struggling to
survive of their own inferiority.

Music and Students' Dance:

Bolivia has its great revolution in 1952, which gave
the Indians land and the right to vote. But financial and cultural
power is still in the hands of the whites, who do not have the great
Inca civilizations as their model, but rather England, France and
Spain. Therefore racism has not disappeared.

The Indians are still considered stupid, cruel and
shifty.

Such an attitude among the influential whites is of
course internalized by the Indians.

As the Indians say: when enough people think bad about
you, you begin to think that they are right.

But the whites do not even live up to the white
standards that are worshipped everywhere.

Not least in the pictures that I saw in restaurants and
homes everywhere next to images of Christ showed this. White women,
white children, even white animals-pets and gulls. When everybody, to
this degree, has internalized such an oppressing image of themselves
that nobody has the energy to fight this sexism and racism, it shows
that the country has a very profound sense of its own inferiority.

A defeated people in a psychologically closed system.
The strong nationalism seems to be a desperate attempt to create a
national identity in a country without mutual confidence and respect
between the different segments of the population.

Even though it has been a hundred years since the
access to the sea and half the country was lost, they still maintain a
navy in illusory expectation that they will again become a seafaring
nation.

The loss is eagerly discussed with typical Bolivian
predilection for finding scapegoats and with extremely solemn and
serious wreath-laying ceremonies in the attempt to convince themselves
that this was the root of all today's problems.

National Anthem and school....

The school-children eagerly walk many kilometers to
school, but a million children in this country with a population like
Denmark's never go to school, and even though most people speak an
Indian language the educational system is Spanish ethnocentric.?

1/5 of the funds for education is spent on universities
for the few children of the white upper-class.

90% of the pupils in the countryside have no books and
often have to sit in the mud - if they are lucky enough to have a
teacher.

For the World Bank has demanded such heavy cuts that a
teacher's salary is now below subsistence minimum.

That most people in the countryside are illiterate is
not surprising. Not when you know that the children get only 57% of the
calories they need. This reduces their learning capacity and it is no
wonder that, in many regions, they seem defeated, frightened, withdrawn
and without hope:

SAD CHILDREN and sad music:

Bolivia's problems may seem overwhelming and the
stamina of its people was the only thing that kept me from sinking into
a depression. It seemed to me to take so little to create a sustainable
existence above subsistence level.

In order to see the projects run by CARE, I traveled
thousands of kilometers around the country. Getting around in this
country was a project in itself and now I understood why travelers in
Latin America have completely neglected Bolivia.

If it hadn't been for Toyota Landcruisers I would never
have made it though the deep mud holes.

All Bolivia's domestic animals appear to live on the
roads and weren't always prepared to stop their meal until their ears
were pulled.

Without a fuel gauge on the jeep, it was nerve-wracking
to try to find a peasant who sold gas, and gas stations were about as
frequent as in Siberia.

Sometimes I would be stuck for hours while people were
digging away the landslides that were constantly threatening to smash
the jeep from above.

My worst drive was on this road where there was a
perpendicular fall of one kilometer and only rarely room to pass
oncoming cars which turned the corners at breakneck speed often with
drunk drivers.

Word has it that there is a worse road in the country
Bhutan, but I seriously doubt it.

In the inner turns of the gulches, the right wheel
track had often been totally washed away.

While my Indian hitch-hikers, although used to roughing
it, declined and got out of the jeep, I had to drive it with one wheel
hanging in the air above the abyss ready to throw myself out if the
jeep skidded.

Here, a truck was smashed against the mountainside like
an airplane and 20 passengers were killed.

One night we were woken up at around 2 a.m. by people
asking for help when this truck had fallen down into a river.

The next morning the river was red with the blood of
the three people killed. Bolivian drivers often drive with only one
hand on the steering wheel in order to be able to make the sign of the
cross with the other one every time they pass one of the numerous
crosses where people have been killed. Crosses popularly called
Bolivian warning signs because they were the only road signs in the
country.

Travel books recommend tourists to close their eyes if
they get a lift in Bolivia .... a piece of good advice if it wasn't for
the magnificent view...

Music

During journeys in Africa it made me extremely
pessimistic to watch aid projects. With the foreign experts living in
luxurious surroundings, in the minds of the population they become a
continuation of the master-slave relationship of colonial times
depriving people of their dignity and killing their initiative, which
leads to further dependence.

Therefore I was very pleased to find that CARE almost
exclusively use native workers who instruct the peasants how they
themselves can carry out the projects.

This is done with great enthusiasm.

In this extremely dry, southern region, it was so
eroded and arid that I could not, even in my wildest dreams, imagine
how people could live there.

And then, suddenly, I was standing in front of these
peasants who proudly showed me how they had dug an irrigation system
from a reservoir on the mountain down to their terraced fields.

The terraces hinders erosion of the mountain slopes and
thanks to the irrigation, they could now harvest 2 crops a year, which
each yielded much more.

This gave them enough, not just to subsist, but also to
sell their surplus in the cities, which benefits everybody because
Bolivia then does not have to spend her scanty resources importing
food. One of the peasants who wasn't participating in the project,
despairingly showed us his corn field which had been spoiled by worms
and disease while the CARE-peasants' fields right next to it were
abounding in corn.

Now that the peasants were no longer so dependent on
the whims of the weather, they did not have to keep large flocks of
goats as a safety net, and this put and end to overgrazing and erosion.

Actually, CARE was already working to reforest the
area. Large areas were closed off from the goats, and very gently they
tried to save the eroded landscaped - first by planting out cactuses
with small banks to detain the water. Later, the peasants plant trees.
This woman told us, that the women are responsible for this nursery,
which produced 2500 trees a year. The trees are planted out by the men
and every family must plant 100 trees.

The more trees planted, the more humidity will come
back to the soil. This means more water in the river all year round and
this helps the families further down the valley, who have also be
taught by CARE and have united to build an irrigation system.

The peasant Geronimo told us that he had been taught by
CARE to plant apple and peach trees between beans and corn on his 3 HA
of land. They shade and quickly prevents the soil from drying out, and
they can be sold on the market.

The group has also been taught to make compost so they
can save the money for fertilizers.

The education that these united peasants are now
getting from CARE was often the only schooling they had ever had, but I
soon came to realize, that, if we are to save the planet from certain
disaster, it may be more important than any schooling they could have
had.

Music: "Todo Cambia"

Up on the Altiplano where the land is exhausted and
overpopulated CARE has given the peasants credits to improve the land.

To pay off the credits for their own land, together
they cultivate this large potato field continuing the Inca traditions
for joint-communal property.

It was a strangely, quiet experience to see them
working together, 45 men shrouded in clouds, rain and cold here on the
roof of the world - the highest workplace in the world.

The Altiplano Indians were the first peasants in the
world to grow the potato more than 4000 years ago.

If they had not, this area would have had no history.

As corn cannot grow at this altitude, the first
settlers would never have survived if they had not had the potato to
eat.

The Altiplano would have been abandoned and the great
civilizations both before and during the Incas would not have existed.

And Europe, without access to Bolivia's almost
inexhaustible silver mines and slave workers would not have been quite
so rich.

While Europe got a considerable push forward, things
are not what they used to be for the Incas.???

When we had to leave them here in the pelting rain,
unable to get their potato truck out of the mud, it felt as if we left
them in the lurch one more time.

Music and driving pictures:

For days we drove through the area where DANIDA, the
Danish International Development Agency, now wants to help CARE finance
similar projects. The area is about the size of Denmark and stretches
from the highest mountain valleys to the Amazon jungle.

The young Fermin is one of the peasants who, by
slashing and burning, has cultivated a part of the rainforest and now
grows corn on 2 HA of land on the steep slopes.

Every cleared area can be cultivated for 3-4 years
before the soil is exhausted and washed away by erosion.

- "If nothing is done, our village will go under in 3
or 4 years and we will have to burn another part of the forest, says
Fermin. In 10-15 years this forest will have vanished and the land will
be destroyed.!

CARE and DANIDA want to participate in saving this
rainforest by helping Fermin and the other peasants to stay on the land
which they have already cultivated.

This is to be done by teaching and assisting them in
building terraces, rotating crops, compostation and storage of the
crops.

The coming years, I shall follow Fermin and his family
of 4 children and other of the peasants in the area during the
construction of the terraces to see how the project

proceeds.

They will be trained in forestry farming?, so they can
conserve the forest and at the same time get an income from it by
selling to the market.

This will be done by establishing nurseries, planting
high-yielding fruit trees, trees for lumber etc. Female participation
is given a high priority with special courses for women and
establishment of clubs for mothers. They are eager to work with CARE,
who has already reduced the infant mortality by building these white
toilets. Actually they were built so well that many families moved into
the toilets to avoid the dead chagas beetle that lives in the crevices
of the houses and in the thatched roofs.

When I found out that a majority of Bolivians carry
chagas infection in their blood, I declined spending the night in their
thatched houses.

CARE Bolivia also wants this presentation to form part
of the education of the peasants and that posters with my pictures are
used all over Bolivia to help the population get a more proud view of
themselves to counterbalance the oppressive worship of the white world.
A positive view of themselves and the ancient Indian traditions is
important to bring man in balance with himself and nature again.

And the construction of terraces and collective farming
which CARE advocates, does indeed have a striking likeness to the
Incas' and Aymaras' ancient collective land-ownership and
terrace-making shown in these pictures from the Altiplano. Traditions
destroyed during the ruthless colonization by the Europeans and their
long landowners' rule.

Out of more selfish motives of saving the rainforest,
the atmosphere and the whole planet, we now come cringing back to
implore them to abandon the destructive methods we once taught them,
and instead go back to those we destroyed for them. But let us not
dwell on the past.

We all have an interest in the success of these
projects. The globe has become a village where the behavior of every
individual influences our common destiny. That the rainforest must be
saved is obvious to everybody, but if we don't create a sustainable
basis for the people in its vicinity, it can and will not happen.

The sums required to help these people create the
necessary basis for existence are so insignificant. And we must find
these amounts in our budgets today.

If we don't, the heavy erosion taking place in the
third world will force large sections of its populations into our
social security system tomorrow - and this may well end up being a
permanent situation.

In the meantime we will forever have destroyed out
planet.

The slender means I saw CARE use to definitively curb a
destructive development and create a basis for existence for whole
village - 8.000 dollars one place and 10.000 somewhere else - seem to
me so insignificantly little compared with the crucial global effect.

When I saw in Bolivia how little it actually takes, I
couldn't help being stricken by the zeal and hope shown by the people I
met behind the anonymous label "the third world".

Parting with? Bolivia's children whom I had fallen so
in love with, I inevitably had to share their hope for a tomorrow and
bring their fearful plea back with me.

Happy children and the song "Manana":

Without hope, we ourselves cannot survive.

Cadena, the Spanish word for chain, is the name of the
area in Bolivia that Danida will support to show that the well-being of
the peasants is closely linked together with the well-being of nature
which, in turn, is linked up with our own well-being. The more we see
this connection, the more pleasure we will get out of this
co-operation. For development work is not tedious, condescending relief
work, but enchanting interaction with the wonderfully Babylonian gift
that we have been given. For instance one learns how sophisticated one
has become in the production processes, if, in a country where most
people cannot afford meat, one orders chicken in a restaurant and first
sees it get bought from a peasant woman and then sees how it flaps and
cackles when it is being slaughtered before it is served - half cooked,
as the cooking time is far too long at this altitude.

And the excitement of watching the brewing of chica,
which is made from corn and tastes like an extremely sour yogurt, and
then get invited to the parties.

The drink is forced on everybody and it is a deep
insult to turn it down, and more vessels keep being carried in.

I succeeded in getting away from this party, but 4 days
later, when I passed by again, I was stopped on the road and once more
dragged to the party which continued with undiminished vigor..

Here I attended a party in the town that Che Guevara
once captured when he was starved, sick and unable to get support from
the Indian peasants.

Today CARE has taken the former guerilla area and are
getting the eager support of the peasants - and are now even offered a
few too many of their chica drinks.

When I wasn't stopped by parties, I was caught in
demonstrations, dance and carnival in the streets.

I almost didn't make it to my plane out of the country
because I was stuck in carnival traffic.

Development co-operation is a belief in life and man's
infinite potential, and I am deeply grateful to have been given the
opportunity to work with a people who throws itself into the work of
solving our common problems with so overwhelming, colorful and catching
a cheerfulness.